Now that I’ve got an Albert Einstein action figure, it occurs to me that I need some other physicist action figures to keep him company.  Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any action figures of Neils Bohr, Marie Curie, Richard Feynman, Albert Michelson, or Max Planck.  No wonder so few children grow up to [...]

Timmy: “Are we gonna discover the secret of life, Mr. Wizard?”
Mr. Wizard: “We will if we’re not careful, Timmy!”
—”Mr. Wizard and Timmy” parody by Stevens & Grdnic
I’m not old enough to have seen the original “Watch Mr. Wizard” show, and I hadn’t even heard of Don Herbert’s more recent Nickelodeon series “Mr. Wizard’s [...]

A high school physics teacher in the UK explains why their new physics syllabus is not actually physics (or even science), but rather what I would describe as an assortment of politically correct bullshit.
I don’t know how this compares to the current physics curriculum in US high schools; as far as I know, we don’t [...]

Taking Exam 2 in Human Heredity and Disease, the Suboptimal Way:

Skim the assigned textbook reading (optional)
Miss class at least one week
Forget that there’s an exam today
It’s an open-book exam, so forget to bring the textbook

On Friday we did the lab on ion exchange reactions, Saturday morning we had the midterm, and Saturday afternoon we did the lab on enthalpy of reactions.  I did well in three semesters of high school chemistry, but that was more than two decades ago, and I didn’t feel like I remembered much of it.  [...]

I’m taking the “online” session of General Chemistry I.  All the homework is done online, and we only physically meet six times, three Friday/Saturday session pairs.  Yesterday was the orientation, which included watching video presentations on how to use lab glassware and instruments, and on safety.  Today we had the first two labs.  The next [...]

The fall semester has started, and on Tuesday evening I went to the first session of HUMAN 007, International Film. This evening I had the first session of BIOSC 015, Human Heredity and Disease.